Do By Friday
Episode 8 artwork
Episode 8 · December 23, 2016 · 01:31:40

8. A Little Something for Daddy

This week's challengeWatch an episode of Star Trek: Voyager.
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Tap a timestamp or any sentence to play from there · machine transcribed (mlx:mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo), expect mistakes

AlexThis is Do By Friday, the weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Temkin. This week's challenge, watch an episode of Star Trek Voyager.

You have ruined my life.

MaxWhat happened? What did Merlin do?

AlexYou and Dan Benjamin talking about the stickiness of the new iPhone cases and how it's human skin.

MaxThat never occurred to you before.

AlexNo.

MaxNo. Wait a minute. Are you both big case boys?

AlexI can't. Here's the thing. I was never a big case boy until the 6S or the 6 because it's a fucking bar of soap. um and but now i need to go get a leather case because this is i'm god it feels like i'm touching

Merlinit it doesn't it feels like synthetic human skin merlin are you a big case boy i'm a big case boy i have a 6s so i have to be big case boy as i discussed on my program with dan benjamin uh i i don't like handling that phone um it's it's not a phone it's soap and it's terrible and i hate

AlexI have a lot of problems, Merlin.

MerlinNo, but the funny part was when you were doing your very, very funny vlog bit about iPhone cases and you kept talking about all those silicone cases, that's the thought that came straight to my mind. You touch them and it feels like a corpse.

And don't they kind of stick? You said now they're less sticky, did you say?

MaxThat's what it feels like to have sex with a robot in Westworld.

AlexYeah, I feel like... maybe just the first generation I think I've been using my case wrong but but uh and now I want a big phone I'm I'm such a millennial oh boy yeah I I'm fighting it

Merlinbecause I don't really need it I know I I like again I mentioned this on the other show but like my wife's photograph my wife her photographs are so good like she just she's got a plus thing she's got a 6s plus and it is and i i i'm not one of those like i have a i have an iphone 7

Maxplus well it's a big boy phone it's a big phone i've got no case i've never put a case on any of my phones i like i have the naked robotic core wow nice pull i i was never i mean god this is so

Merlinboring i was never i think i had a case for one of my early three ish series phones but i know i haven't used one since and the thing is part of the beauty of the i guess four and five i mean 5s is my i think my favorite phone i've ever had i love the design of it was that the metal edge

Maxantenna gate phone that phone that's the best that probably the best thing apple ever made

AlexThat was not antenna gate. That was. Was that one after? That was four.

MaxWhatever. None of those cases. None of those cases affected reception. That whole thing was made up. It was all nonsense.

AlexYeah.

MerlinWell, I mean, it's just that the I guess what I'm trying to say is that I never felt the need for one. I have never. Oh, God. This is one of those things like saying I'm not sick. Isn't that interesting? And then you get sick. I've never, never damaged a phone. I've never dropped a phone. Look down.

MaxIt's already. Check your pocket. It is already broken.

MerlinLeft pocket. left pocket port up face in it's uh can i tell you something i've had an iphone since the since i was

Maxable to afford one which was the not the first one but the second one with the plastic back and the what was that the iphone 3g the iphone oh my god that's my first phone the iphone 3g my first iphone and i have never put a case on my iphone and i have never broken an iphone until this case design and within the first month of owning it it just like flew out of my hands under the concrete floor of the garage and shattered oh no never i had like my entire life i've had an unprotected iphone and you know what i got right back on that horse

and i've and i've got this big this big boy that rides around in my pocket but you have the uh

Alexlike we we both have the jet black and for a while i was using the piano piano shiny yes the piano black and uh every time i put it down this is another john siercusa problem i would put it down like a baby or like an egg that i didn't want to crack because the lens this is so exciting i

Maxcould talk about this can i ask you guys another question i really am struggling with so how when did the seven come out september in september okay so i've had this phone for not that long and i went with the big boy i went with the big phone because i wanted the the dual camera and all that business, and the bigger battery. That's a very attractive feature. I think I regret getting the big phone. I think I wish I had a small phone, because here's the thing. I also have an iPad. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

MerlinYeah, and if you are committed, like I have an iPad. I have the small iPad Pro, and it's probably a pretty close tie with the SE30 for my favorite Apple device I've ever owned.

AlexWow.

Merlinit's peerless it's the size is perfect for me it's uh i mean i i find it easier to handle than my phone and i use it for everything it's i i'm not everything but i mean like given any other choice i would prefer to do it on that device it is lightning fast it looks great um and so the thing is once you've used an ipad a lot you really start to see these devices as being i think four different things where at first, like if you've got, like if you went out and bought,

you know, any kind of second dingus for a while, you go like, Oh, I should really use my Kindle more. I should do this. Like once you've done it for a while though, you don't have to think about it. You say, well, okay. I know that if I'm going to read a lot of stuff, you know, I'd rather just do it on the iPad. There's some kinds of things where like, it's just easier to grab the phone. Like for example, for doing like a, like a voice memo or something, you know, and the phone's right there and i'll grab it i don't have to think twice about it but yeah um i uh i think once you've gotten into that lifestyle it's um it's kind of hard to go back no no none of this is uh none of

Maxthis is uh making it into the edit but uh god max you're killing me i have two i have two odds and

Merlinsods for you you spill you spill so much seed upon the ground you're killing me you cut out you cut out so many things gotta keep it tight gotta keep it tight tight hour there's no need for tight no Oh, come on. Really? Tight hour.

MaxWhat is this, 2007? Come on. You get in, you get out, you're in one hour. If I could get that sucker down to 40 minutes, ooh, then we'd really be moving. All right, I got two things for you. I went to the Apple store to get some holiday presents. And, you know, you never leave the Apple store without getting a little something for dad, if you know what I mean. And in this case, I'm dad. and uh i got the uh so i i decided that um i own the smart uh floppy oh um what do they call it the smart keyboard for the ipad pro the apple official apple accessory and i never put it on

it's terrible it's not i i um the one that's built into the case the one that is built into the case that apple provides i just couldn't ever get into using it like i even on an airplane or something like I almost would rather just sort of type on the soft keyboard on the screen but anyway I just sort of on a whim I saw that Logitech has a line of cases called the Logi for iPad Pro and it has oh wait that's that's not a dumb name that's a dumb oh no it is it's

Alexcalled the Logi yeah oh Alex but shit Alex has the same one look at that she's pulled it out

Maxbecause and it's got a holder in the in the in the fold in the flap in the little skin flap you can

Alexfold in the pen it's a pencil i never use the pen because it's a pencil sorry excuse me excuse me

Maxi um i uh i never use this fucking thing because it how do you ever like when are you ever like oh like i'll yes i'll have the i'll like bring this pencil with me now like never it just sits in a little jar on my desk and i and i never have it when i want it um but uh now it rides around in my case and I feel like I'm gonna I'm gonna get a lot more use out of this thing I and then I have one more odds and sods for you Merlin are you aware of I learned about this from uh my friend James T Green are you aware of press to record yes I keep meaning to use it more I heard Serenity

MerlinCaldwell talk about a long time ago and it's kind of a wet dream that to have something like that and I need to remember to use it more because it's magic um so let me tell you have you seen this have

Maxyou seen this uh app alex yeah i think alex and i are both on it from because of james this is like one of my top pick apps across the entire apple ecosystem they also have a mac version now and like what's what's fucking awesome about it is it lives in a widget and it's one button you pull the widget sheet down you hit tap you say your business you're done you walk away and then you sit down at your computer later there's your voice note fucking transcribed transcribed if it

Merlinjust was the recording you go that's a really good idea but the fact that it transcribes it and mostly gets it is crazy.

MaxGood enough that I can, that it's good enough, it transcribed good enough that I understand it, right? It's like I know what I was talking about when I was in, I use that constantly. It's such a good app. It's so good. Yeah, I got to remember to use it more.

MerlinI meant to do it as a way to remember my dreams and I just, I forget.

MaxWell, you can't, but what are you going to wake up in bed and say your dreams into the, you can't talk because you're, you're, that's the use case, yeah.

AlexLet's, let,

Maxyour special lady friend is asleep.

AlexAll right, pause. So I think Max and I are both wondering, so you would wake up in the middle of the night then and just whisper into your phone what you had just experienced?

MaxYou're lying next to your partner. She's asleep. And you're like, Siri, begin a new note. No, excuse me. Siri, append to my note dreams. See, when you say it like that, it sounds really weird.

MerlinPermiso. Permiso. I would get up and like a gentleman, I'd pull my watch to my mouth and I would say, I was in college except I wasn't in college and you were there, only it wasn't you. And I had to eat a turtle and had to get my father to wear a donut or whatever. Permiso.

Permiso. Tell it to the ancient bird. This is odds and sods. This isn't going to go in the show. Let me see if I can find some that I had not read to John. Let's see. I've got some good ones here. Dreams. Oh, here's some dreams. Boy, I wish I remembered my dreams. Here we go. In every home, there's a place. Kind of like an alcove, phone booth, or even just organic-looking hole in the wall. Original idea is you whisper your dreams in there while they're fresh. But it could also be that it's for some kind of confession.

And we're taught that it's totally private and stays there forever. It turns out to be like an ancient animal. You're literally speaking into the ear of an ancient bird that seems dead. It remembers everything. Wow. wow some of these are really good and i just okay so this is this i'm just gonna i haven't i'm cold reading this later genre of sci-fi it's okay to explain away something with because science almost like censorship style black dots but a big metaphorical dot over something and say hey it's this way because science or whatever else just made it that way even though you haven't

figured it out yet at least in the story well that i agree with yeah but there were there's like dots will echo uh editing style dots over something i knew that there was something important

Alexbehind the dot but it had been redacted i'm worried that this is going to be a challenge uh record documenting our dreams well alex doesn't sleep and i don't i haven't remembered a dream

Maxsince i was six years old so that's going to be a tough challenge you should try my herbal uh herbal

Merlinsleep medicine i'll try what i'll take some pills and go to sleep don't spoil it i got a challenge for you this week. Okay.

MaxLet me see. Oh, okay. And then final odds and sides question on the iPad. So let me ask you this. I'm trying to- Killing me. I'm trying to adopt- Killing me. I'm trying to adopt like an iPad. So I have this iPad Pro and I use it to like watch Netflix in bed. So the big boy, you got the big boy? So I had the big boy. I returned it and I got the normal boy because the big boy was too bright for me to watch Netflix in bed. It was basically like I was sitting in bed with a widescreen television six inches away from veronica's face when she was trying to sleep it was not taking um so i have the normal ipad boy

and i use it i don't know what do i read instapaper on it i play i take it on airplanes with like movies on it it's like it does not get enough use for how great of a device it is so help me out here like what am i supposed to be how do i how do i adopt this ipad based lifestyle like what do i need to be doing like like you know so i like have my computer at work and i pretty much like putter around on my giant phone all day at home. What are the kinds of things that should be going on on this iPad?

MerlinWell, Alex, you want to go? Yeah. I got a few, but you think about everything more than I do. I mean, I don't think about these things. I think you think about how you use these things way more than I do.

AlexI mean, I agree. I do think about shiny toys a lot more than most people should. But are you familiar with the show Canvas that Federico Bicicci does, Max?

MaxI'm familiar with it in that it's a show I would listen to if I had a different lifestyle. It's a really good show.

AlexBut there's just a series about, it's maybe three episodes about the Apple Workflow. And it is awesome.

MaxIs it called the Apple Workflow?

AlexNo, it's just, there's an app. It's called Workflow.

Maxcan i okay side side let me ask you about i'm familiar with workflow every six months i install workflow and i try to make a workflow for i spend like three hours and i'm like this will improve my productivity and then half the day goes by and then i delete workflow why what is tell me one

Merlinworkflow that you use ever do you have any well i mean it's the the thing is at this button on your home screen get me get me an uber to the closest condition because i have the same condition which is that at a different time in my life uh that's all i would have done all day is play with workflow. That's like what I used to do for work and for funsies. And there's so much you can do. I think there's the level you eventually get to, which is not where either of us is now, the level you eventually get to is, oh, I need a way to do this thing that's currently difficult

to do. The level you get to before that is that you change other people's scripts. The level you get to before that, though, is just blue sky. Think about, is there something crazy that I need to do sometimes that is currently difficult to do. And I think one Alex might be able to chime in on is, sometimes there's embedded audio on a page that you'd like to put somewhere else. Like, I like putting stuff into Overcast to be able to listen to. That's my go-to place. And the thing is, the community, I'm saying this because at this point, the community that has created workflows is big enough that there's a pretty

good chance if there's an itch you want to scratch, there's something that's very close to what you want. And the general idea is bookmarklet huff duffer problem solved what's next what you got uh but the idea but the idea is like if you just the i think the general mindset that i bring to this is is there stuff is there stuff that is someplace that's hard to get onto this device or somewhere else uh or or is there something i have on this device that i need to get somewhere else that that's very general but i think with that in mind you can do a lot of stuff with getting things to a pdf

getting stuff you can download youtube videos and turn it i've turned youtube videos into mp3s on my ipad and then been able to upload them so things like that for like a children's magic show like

Maxwhy though well i mean like a birthday like a like a party trick well like with huff duffer

Merlinon a desktop there's a bookmark that somebody made i think it's on github um but somebody made a really cool service where you can basically point when you're on a page with a video on it especially a YouTube video, you hit the bookmarklet, and it does some Disney magic where there's like a Heroku somewhere that basically tears the audio out of that MP3, uploads it to Huff Duffer, and now you can listen to like a TED Talk or something without having to watch the video. It's on your Huff Duffer now, so consequently it's in your Overcast.

MaxMerlin, my good friend, are you familiar with the new thing Zinc?

MerlinMaybe.

MaxOh, yeah, I did.

MerlinIt's the thing Gruber was talking about?

MaxYes, it goes on the Apple TV.

MerlinI use Plex. I use Plex for that.

MaxSure. Same situation. But I don't know. It's just like how much of my life am I going to spend – how much of my life will I invest so I can listen to the audio of a TED Talk in the app that I want on my iPad versus just fucking opening my laptop like a grown-up and watching the TED Talk.

MerlinAll right, Johnny Clarendon. Don't become incurious. You are too young to become incurious. You have plenty of time to become a grizzled old man about this. Keep your mind open to what is possible. Now, Alex, jump in here because I know you spend time with these things.

AlexDo you know what I'm saying? Why don't people just read books anymore?

MaxI don't understand this. Why can't the kids play with their stick and hoop? Why do people go out to eat? Who's coming up with this stuff? It's so cheap to eat nutrient bars at home. Has anybody ever really thought about glass?

MerlinWho's using this stuff?

AlexAll right. So I think, Max, we talked about this a while ago, how your job has changed so much that you really don't need your laptop when you are not at the office.

MaxYeah, that's pretty much. Although, no, yeah, okay.

AlexWell, I mean, unless you're playing over. Let's assume that all you want to do is do some really light stuff in the creative suite or something like that. Or let's say you want to yell at a certain subsect of employees. All of them. Yeah. Simultaneously. Exactly. You just create a workflow that's like Siri, implement employee discipline program Delta. You're like, okay, text event. You can have a little widget that it makes a little app icon. And then it just sends a group text people. And then I like have that implemented with what is text expander. And it's just, it's how many have you ever done? Have you ever done the math on this? So let's say it's going to take you.

MaxSo it's going to take you two hours to install workflow and set this whole thing up and add it to your home screen and debug it and make it work, right? Why would I dig a well when I already have a bucket?

MerlinHave you ever really thought about how much would you actually use the water from that well? We've already got a perfectly serviceable stream. I've got a bucket. Why don't people use buckets anymore?

AlexOh, man.

MerlinI'm just saying. I'm just saying. You are. You are just saying. You want a way to say to your computer, execute order 66. And all of a sudden, everybody turns into a stormtrooper. You wipe out the entire Chicago facility.

MaxThat's all I want. Listen, come back when Workflow can empty the litter box. Am I right? You need another $1,500 cat box.

AlexWhen that fancy cat box has iftata support, you will be able to have a Workflow that's empty my cat. Oh, I see.

MaxIf-ta-ta-ta. Tell my Westworld robot to empty the litter box.

AlexYeah.

MerlinI have a very, very mundane use of my iPad that has become very precious to me. So I do a lot of stuff with text files. To me, text files are where stuff goes, and I use editorial for that. As you know, I'm very tightly wound about how I organize my screens. I like to be real careful about it. The only thing that's like a consistent thing on my devices is that editorial is always in the lower right-hand corner these days because I want my right thumb to always be able to hit it.

You hit editorial, it opens up, and you're probably already inside a text file, which is cool. Editorial also has the ability to add bookmarks up at the top of the screen. So I have something called today.taskpaper, and that's where I do most of my figuring out what I've got to do today. And so I just hit today. It pops up, and I'm doing task paper style just typing in there. It's very easy to do. It's very fast to do. I can get to it. And, like, it's just a joy to do on the iPad. I know that that's not sexy. That's not exciting.

But, like, when I'm laying in bed and I want to start capturing show notes for thinking about what we're going to do, I just created it. The easiest for me is I go to drafts. I type something. I hit create new file. I pop over to editorial. I just start typing. And it's a breeze. You can export it as HTML. You can print it. You can do whatever with it. That's really mundane. But you can also do stuff like color. You could use pigment with your Apple pencil. That's really fun to do. You could color.

AlexI just want to point out that Merlin has, I have a problem with this system in that I have, I do not have the big boy iPad. I have the reasonably sized iPad, but I still am a big bed reader and I fall asleep and the iPad crashes to the floor and it has not yet broken. and I really, I keep thinking, man, if I just had a phone that was a little bigger, and with the 5 and 5S, I was so, so fast at typing with one thumb.

MerlinI know, my typing has gone to shit. Yes.

AlexI used to be so fucking fast on the 4 and 5. Merlin, I want to buy a big, oh, man.

MerlinNow everything's, every word's got commas in it, and I mean to hit the capital, but it makes an A, and it's like, there's like these certain things that for like years now, I keep doing the same dumb typing mistakes. And the thing is, once you put a comma in accidentally, because you think you hit the space bar, but you hit comma, now it treats it as different words.

AlexYeah. And I see my other boss, who is not a phone person, but suddenly she's like a ninja with typing, because you got a big phone. And with events work, which is like, when we're on a site, if I don't have my phone, I'm basically a useless block. Well, honestly, in every aspect of life, if my phone isn't with me, I'm just a useless person. And I just I want to be I want to be the nerdy phone ninja.

MerlinCan I give you can I give you a positive note, Alex?

AlexSure.

MerlinI'm going to I'm going to try. I'm going to try and cut this baby in half. You are young. Your eyes are probably pretty good. You're good. You're good. Here's my God. You guys. How do you guys? You're insufferable. You you really genuinely enjoy this. You would benefit from it. I think you should go and buy the nicest large iPhone that you can afford. And I think you would benefit from it. I think you should do it. And I think you should not look back. I'm giving you permission.

AlexNeed something for daddy. All right. I'm sorry, Max. Pick that one for daddy. I felt really bad last time. Listeners were very nice about my – I was recording very high. And now I've got my monster energy drink again. And I'm just all amped up about phones. and I'm so excited to talk about Star Trek.

MaxCan I ask, I have one more question. How do I edit? And after that, I have a life hack. Go ahead.

MerlinHow do I edit a PDF on an iPad? PDF Pen Pro.

MaxMerlin, you want to tell me about something you like?

MerlinYeah, I got to tell you. Servers submerged in oil. You know, this is another, as you know, I'm very into life hacks in life. And I struggle with sleep. I take sleep things. And you know, though, I got a tip. if you're falling asleep, sounds like you struggle with sleep, Alex.

AlexOh, yeah.

MerlinDo you struggle to get to sleep, stay asleep, or both?

AlexBoth.

MerlinReally? Yeah. Okay. Well, I take this herbal thing at night that is fucking great. I don't know if it would interfere with your chemistry, but I'd be happy to share that with you. It's not costly. It does not make you feel hungover like a Benadryl does, but it works really great. I sleep a lot deeper. I wake up a lot less, and I don't feel like shit in the morning. So I'm going to recommend that to you in a minute. But here's a really dumb thing to make yourself start paying attention to. And it's been really good for me because I would frequently go,

oh, I'm just going to watch this first episode of the OA and then I wake up and it's 2.30 and I'm asleep on the couch like a fucking idiot. Pay attention. Start noticing if you yawn.

And here's the thing. I know this is going to sound, yawn means you're sleepy, right? But if you're watching TV, you're doing a thing, you're not listening to your body, start paying attention to the first time that you yawn, and start noticing how long it is between the first time you yawn and when your body really wants to go to sleep. And you'll eventually discover you have a window. You have a window of like, this is a sensible time to go to sleep. If you keep yawning and you keep reading, is it any wonder at all that the iPad falls on the floor? You're not listening to your body. So my advice to you, which is really mundane, is to start paying attention to noticing your body, be a

little mindful notice when you're notice when you're getting sleepy and start figuring out how long that means your clock is ticking it's going to be a certain amount of time before your body

Maxwants to go to sleep can you go back to telling me about the chemical that i can take though

Alexyeah i really want no in all seriousness that's a very good advice thank you merlin but please

Merlintell us about the chemicals um yeah i mean let me let me go look it up i buy it in big jugs um i love a big jug of herbs night it's called night something now what do you do you smoke it

Maxor can you vape it? You put it in your douche

Merlinand you really, really want to get in there.

MaxYou gotta butt chug it. The kids do that now. What's that? They take a tampon and they put it in vodka

Alexand then up the butt. People still do that.

MaxYou can die of alcohol poisoning from that.

AlexIt's so scary. Why not? You butt chug. It's very cost effective.

MerlinIt's very cost effective. You can have a big night out.

AlexI mean, I don't know. If you want a quality, like a really quality tampon that's going to absorb it, that's really as much as like two drinks.

MaxThat can't be true. Is that true? Well, think about... What's the best tampon? Do lesbians even menstruate? Is that a thing? Yeah. Oh, please. What tampon is... What does Gwyneth Paltrow say I should buy as a tampon?

I no longer know how to do email on my iPad. The one email app that worked, which was Inbox, which they did their own, they did some dark evil magic on their side to make the indexing and the search and everything work, so it was fast.

AlexI'm going to well actually you, because I think you might actually confuse people. You are not, you were talking about Mailbox, correct? Sorry, Mailbox.

MaxExcuse me. mailbox was great mailbox did some dark magic where i think they actually this is why i think they went under is i believe what was happening under the hood was they were cloning your entire gmail inbox unbeknownst to you so that it could quickly i have apps the app i use right now does that and it freaks me the fuck what do you use i want that i don't care there's nothing in my email i'm willing to make this trade oh my god everything you say it's all going to be in the

Merlinclip reel someday i'm kind of nothing to hide um spark i use that too by riaddle does can i ask

Maxyou a question if i yes if i go into mail then the apple official apple mail app and i search

Merlinfor something in my email it does not work unless it's like currently in my inbox it works it works in spark and spark also has saved searches so i i frequently want to go when i'm getting ready for back to work i'll go in and search for email to or from btw at five by five dot tv and so i just

Maxme that a saved search and you're telling me that you're telling me if i search for email in spark in my gmail inbox it will find it yes absolutely and it's got it's got it's got booleans i think

Merlini don't use them but i'm pretty sure you can do some pretty uh cool stuff i think you might be able to you might be able to find attachments and stuff but like i found it to be very reliable

Maxi've tried i think i've tried every email app on like that exists at post um mailbox and they're all like some sort of fucking monkey paw where they like will fix some problems but create new

Alexproblems yep yeah i agree well i agree and the thing with spark too is you can uh have custom gestures so i just remapped it to what the mailbox gestures used to be so i can still like have my swipees in the right wow that's a huge time savings you know well i mean the thing

Merlinthat i do uh and i'm not proud of this but actually i just looked at my phone for a second to see what I have for email. Right now I'm in my inbox. And because it's after 10, 20 in the morning, it means everything that I snoozed yesterday has come back up. So I'm going to the bottom. I'm going to swipe from right to left and say snooze all of my mail until tomorrow because I'm a bad person.

AlexI used snooze actually for the first time yesterday because I'm technically on vacation because I had this... I'm technically on vacation. My boss is this guy who's so generous with vacation days that I just have a bunch left for 2016.

MaxWell, Alex, you're doing a really, you've certainly hidden the fact that you're on vacation by...

AlexIt's on your calendar.

MerlinBut here's the problem is even if you're on vacation, if you're there... Yeah, if you're in the office working, what kind of a vacation is that? You're stealing time from Max. If you're not there and being 100%, you don't get to phone it in just because you're quote unquote technically on vacation. That's stealing time from Max. Thank you.

AlexVery true.

MaxAll right, let's start the show. Hi, everybody. Hey, Max. How's it going, buddy? Good. Who watched Star Trek this week? Are you guys excited for Star Trek talk?

AlexThis is the first Star Trek episode I've ever seen in my entire life.

MaxHow is that even possible? That doesn't seem possible. It seems like by osmosis, it seems like just wandering through life, you'd see a Star Trek at some point.

MerlinDoes that include the original series?

MaxYou never saw any Star Treks? That's amazing. So I'm a huge Star Trek fan. I have seen every episode of every Star Trek. I have even sort of hoovered up all of the Star Trek breadcrumbs. I'm just so desperate for any sort of Trek stuff. I've read all of the books and the comics and the animated series and everything. Wow. Yeah, I just fucking love Star Trek, which we can I'm happy to talk about what I like about it. But I've been working on over the last few years, these sort of episode guides for the series that I you know, the series that I love are next gen Deep Space Nine and Voyager.

I think those are the the pinnacle of the Star Wars or excuse me. I think that's the pinnacle of the Star Trek sort of canon that's out there. And I but it's hard to get into. these shows were made to be shown in syndication and there's lots of clunkers and they made too many episodes and the quality is wildly inconsistent so I'm trying to work on these episode guides that give people a good place to start and then sort of guide them through this this sort of minimalist experience where they can get the best of the Star Trek experience without

having to see even sit through the bad episodes so I'm working on my Voyager guide that's the that's the one I haven't written yet and I'm trying to pin down you know what I'm looking for in a starter episode is you can watch this episode. It gives you a taste of what the show is about at its heart. It cuts right to the bone of what is this show. And then you can watch it. And even if you don't get every single thing that happens, you can sort of decide, like, I like that and I want more of that, or I did not like that and I don't want more of that. So at this point, it's almost like more of like a theory that this episode, which is, weirdly, it's in the last season of

Voyager. It's in season seven. It's called The Void. You know, my feeling is that sort of story wise, character wise, thematically, this episode, to me, at least, it represents it's almost like a little microcosm of like, hey, here's what Voyager is about. It's like, you know, here's like the little like thesis statement of the ideas that are interesting in Voyager. And so I was curious to have you guys as sort of my test viewers, watch this episode. And then just give me your honest feedback of like you know did you understand what was going on was it boring did you I don't

know like does it make you curious to watch more Voyager etc etc so uh we've all seen the episode

Alexuh what were your thoughts all right um I what I know of Star Trek is mostly what Max has told me about how uh it's about smart people solving problems in somewhat dire situations and sometimes somewhat boring situations and this episode is a very uh it feels like a very dire like oh we could we could die if we cannot get out of out of this this spaceship and uh but yet everyone remains calm and everyone is rational and uh I have never seen Captain Janeway which I think

is is she the only lady Star Trek captain uh well that's a complicated question oh all right in the

MaxIn all of the TV series. Of the major TV shows.

AlexShe's the only good.

MaxThere are five Star Trek TV series, and only one of them has a female lead as the captain. However, in the Star Trek universe, you do see on screen many captains that are women.

AlexGotcha. So I was already biased going into it, because I was like, I finally get to see the character that Max's cat is named after. And I was like so enthralled by her performance, which I was not expecting because, wow, if I could watch this series without the soundtrack, I would really like that because it felt really cheesy and gross. But the thing that immediately struck me about Janeway, and Merlin, this might be a quote from you, but I really like the idea of you don't always have to be nice, but you should always be kind.

And that is what kind of, I feel like Janeway really, really stuck to that the entire episode. And I don't know if this is her character throughout the series, but like in her negotiations, she she can kind of be a bitch to people. But it's because she is sticking to her morals and speaking, sticking to I mean, I guess it's hard to call Star Trek like a series about pacifists. But, you know, she's she's not going to hurt innocent people.

And she remains calm. And I don't know. I think I got more from this episode. I got more out of the characters than I did the actual plot. Because I was kind of confused. At some points, I was sort of confused. Like, wait, who? They got on the ship? What's happening? Which eventually I realized I really liked that there was no shitty space battles. It just kind of cuts to the conversation, which is what I like.

Like you don't see the voting in Congress during the West Wing. You just cut to the conversation.

MerlinYeah, there wasn't. It was. Yeah, I agree with everything you're saying. And it's I guess what they do with what teleporting? What do they call it? Or beaming? Like that's that's much more. It's very important in this episode that there is the ability to make things and people go from one place to another. in a way that is much, you can do a lot more with it than I've seen in like watching old Star Treks, where you usually got to go stand in the tube and, you know, get beamed.

But I like the fact that, and this must certainly partly be by virtue of the fact that this is a later season, all that tech has been established. But I liked it because it didn't get in the way. They didn't feel the need. Like, I guess, you know, in the original series, they wanted to show, here's the special effect we have and the little noise that it makes and all of that. I like that they didn't do that. As far as Max's question, I mean, obviously I would need to watch tons more of these to know if this is the best. But I liked it. I can tell you that as my second episode of this series I've ever seen, I thought it was really good.

Especially, you know, if you grade on a little bit of a curve, like this is a TV show. It probably didn't have the biggest budget. You know, I look past all that stuff pretty quickly. And like you, Alex, I think I focus mostly on the characters and their interactions. And even, I guess there's stuff I've picked up ambiently about every series a little bit. But also there's just the kind of tropes of what you know there's going to be like the funny alien. There's going to be the super competent other alien. So I didn't have any trouble picking up, given how late in the run it is.

I was very happily surprised that my daughter and I, we watched it together. She's nine. She loved it. I loved it. And I felt like we immediately wanted to watch more of this show after watching it. So I would say check plus.

MaxWhat grade are you in when you're nine? She's in third grade. I'm trying to remember when, if I was sort of watching Star Trek in third grade. I don't think I was. I think that was a little younger than I got into Star Trek. The kids are hard now, you know? They see stuff.

MerlinWell, the biggest barrier for I think every generation, I think this has always been true. I think it's comforting to think this is more true now. I'm not persuaded it is. But I think something every generation suffers from is something that looks old. So for example, people that are only a little bit younger than me think black and white movies look really strange, like when they're kids. Everything you've seen is color. So something that doesn't have color, you know, it's almost like a Freudian thing. You're like, that has a lack of something. This is weird. Why is this not in color? or in this case

you know a funny thing she does sometimes is you go so there's a big somebody says something really dramatic there's a blast of strings and then it fades and she turns and says is that where the commercial would be and I'm like yeah that's where the commercial would be because commercials are something that she sees four times a year in hotel rooms but I don't want yeah I don't want to monopolize but I thought it was really good I just put a link in notes to a phrase I learned not too long ago competence porn which is usually used in a derogatory way to say, like, is this a piece of, you know, film, movie, art?

You know, I think The Martian is sometimes held up as this. Like, there's a certain kind of genre of, like, it's a film about watching somebody deal with a difficult situation, and it's just mostly about how super competent they are. And I have to tell you, I enjoy that a lot when it's well done. And in this case, that competence porn was not simply about her ability to stay cool, but obviously also to like deal with her just her the principles of I assume not Starfleet what's the Federation right even though she's untethered officially from like you know but she's they have

Maxprinciples to what they're going to do well let me let me tell you a little just a little story background on Voyager this is like what you would have learned you know had you sort of started the show from the beginning so so in Deep Space Nine which is the the one that I wrote the guide about last time. It focuses on this very sort of interesting political situation that's almost like space Jews and space Nazis, and the Federation is sort of dealing with the aftermath of the space Nazi occupation of the space Jews. The evil space Nazis are the Cardassians.

And what happens is there's a group of colonists and Federation people who feel like the Federation should not compromise or have diplomacy with the space Nazis. And they form a rogue group called the Maquis, and the Maquis are like a Federation resistance cell. And they use terrorist tactics to disrupt the Federation, and they are portrayed somewhat in a sympathetic moral light

because I think it is a question in Deep Space Nine. It has enough comfort with moral ambiguity, which is very new for Star Trek. You know, Star Trek is these very pat, sort of cut and dry little morality, like pastoral tales, like these little morality tales of like, you know, and then Captain Picard did the right thing and the universe was right and they moved on to the next planet. And Deep Space Nine has the courage to be like, well, what if there's like traitors and dissidents and terrorists and all of this ethical ambiguity? So Voyager starts in this time of Star Trek

in the 24th century, which, as the Improvised Star Trek podcast says, is a period of peak Star Trek. And they set off Voyager as like a science vessel, and their first mission is to go into this nebula where the Maquis are hiding and flush out the Maquis. And they're pulled through this complicated thing into this Delta Quadrant, you know, 75 years away from home, like a billion light years away from home, with the Maquis ship. And in the pilot, the Maquis ship, these are these Federation traders,

They have to integrate into the Voyager crew, and they all have to become one crew. And the whole show is exploring, okay, this one Federation ship, they're integrated with these anti-Federation terrorists. They're a million miles away from the Federation. How far do they bend their morals? How much do they compromise before they're not the Federation anymore? How far can you go? What will you do for survival before it's not worth surviving anymore, right? Before all the principles that you're living for and you're wearing this uniform for are violated and mean nothing.

And at its best, Voyager has these very interesting, it pushes these characters to limits that you never see in another Star Trek show. Because in another Star Trek show, there's always the Federation around to like bail the ship out if they get into trouble or reprimand them if they do the wrong thing. And that's not an option in Voyager. Voyager can break the prime directive and there's no one around to reprimand them, right? They are the only, they're the only ship. They're the only people who are sort of accountable for their actions. And what I love about this episode is it's one of the only episodes in Voyager that like almost like characters like, you know, they're like talking about this issue in a very literal way.

And I just think it's very relevant to our current political climate. And I can't stop.

MerlinA little too relevant.

MaxYeah. I mean, I can't stop thinking about it because, and the, you know, just to be, to be, to, you know, not, I don't want to beat around the bush, just to be blunt about it. Like there's this conversation on the left that I think is there's not I don't have an easy answer for this. It's just it's just a conversation, a question that's happening, which is how much does the left work with the Trump administration? Because Trump is this awful character. He represents a violation of almost every principle that I hold. I oppose almost everything that he believes. And even if I agree with him, I don't want to support him because his methodology is so against everything that I support.

MerlinOh, yeah.

MaxSo it's like, but at what point? But it's like, okay, but also like we live in the same country and we've got to find, we have to make peace. Like we have to have some common ground.

MerlinWell, I mean, basically, I mean, in a nut, this ship is going through space. They find themselves in this place that is very strange. There are no stars. Long story short, they're trapped in this thing called the void. And the void is this very, very, very large area that's basically like a lobster trap. It just, it captures ships in there. And once you are, the conceit is once you are in the void, it is very, very difficult or apparently impossible to get out. The twist is that it basically becomes like those now the lobsters that are in the trap are all fighting each other for their life.

And the ones who get the toughest treatment are the new people who don't know what's going on in the void. So people who are there are stuck there. Well, we meet one group that's been there for at least, I guess, five years. And so it's very much all against all. There's no sense of—it's just—what does CGP Grey call it? You know, a bigger army diplomacy? It's just—is that fair to say? It's all against all. This is hopeless. You're probably going to be here forever. You have to steal everything you can. Your energy is—the nature of the void, which I thought was an interesting conceit,

the nature of the energy in this place is that even just having the ship just doing nothing, It's using something like 10 times more deuterium or whatever of the energy source. And so basically our heroes land in this thing, don't know what the hell is going on. They're immediately set upon by other ships who see them as easy targets. Most of their energy and their food is transported off the ship by other ships. And now they don't know what's going on, and they realize they have a very limited amount of time to not only just figure this out, but even to just stay alive.

It's a matter of days to figure out how they're going to stay alive because they've been plundered. And then the episode itself spins out—I mean, I don't want to spoil this, but the episode spins out with, well, okay, Captain Janeway and her strong feelings about following the rules of the Federation and their ethos has a somewhat unconventional approach to trying to not simply survive, but to stay hewn to the moral and ethical vision of the Federation in a place where even her own shipmates think that's not really, that's not a sensible way to proceed.

That really, we have to use everything we can to just fight the way the others are fighting.

MaxYeah, that is a very good summary. And to me, the sort of pivotal plot point comes in when Janeway is sort of trying to make this alliance with these other ships and her staff comes to her and says, you know, what the hell are you doing? You're like giving our supplies away and you're allying with these people who are going to stab us in the back. Wouldn't it be?

MerlinWell, that's something we should say that we're going to say, then we should say. That's the twist. The twist is that Janeway says, no, we're not going to do this. We're going to do the opposite of that, which is we're not going to hoard our stuff and kill everybody. We're going to actually give give our stuff away. We're going to collaborate. We're going to be open and vulnerable in order to build an alliance that will help us all benefit from each other's resources and technology in order to find some way to get out of this, which sounds bonkers to everybody.

AlexWhich that that felt a little bit strange to me because she has a very rational argument and she is like very brave. And, you know, I my we didn't mention this before, but the aliens that sort of come on the ship there, what would you they're almost like other people call them parasites because they just jump from ship to ship.

MerlinRight, right, right.

AlexAnd there's this one guy who's like, oh, God, how can you be on this ship? And she just shuts them down and is like, you will get out of this alliance if you fuck with people.

MerlinOther ships in there, people consider them like rats, Jawas, women. They're a nuisance and they're a threat and they carry disease. And they're kind of like the Jawas Jews of the story.

AlexAnd that falls... Pop it, pop it, pop it. That falls... i i just uh man because it it felt like uh this this is janeway like talking to some not an alt-right person but uh just trying to be like okay we are going to try but do not do not

Maxfuck with what we like our core beliefs and and later this guy it's revealed that he he basically like he like blew up a ship and stole some technology that they needed so that they could do their escape plan and Janeway kicks him off out of the alliance and gets rid of the tech like throws out the tech that he stole even though they need it and what I think is so I think that's interesting because the story shows Janeway as this sort of like moral authority and it shows that she's willing to bend so she's willing to compromise her morals and she's willing to

compromise the Starfleet code to ally with these unsavory characters. She's willing to put aside the security of the ship and all of their procedures in the Starfleet way and bend in order to survive and prosper. But she's not willing to break. There's like a line between being flexible and selling out everything you believe to survive. And I feel like so often when And we get, you know, like I was saying, this is this debate on the left of like, like, let's say you work for a tech company.

Right. And the White House calls up and says the president is asking you to serve your country. Will you will you come be part of the do some digital thing for the Trump White House? And on the one hand, even if you hate Trump and you hate everything he stands for and you oppose his methodology, you want the country to prosper and you want Trump to have the best people to make the country work. Like our success depends. I, you know, it is like people will even be mad at me for saying this, but our success is normalizing it. But I'm sorry, but he's the president and our success is tied up with his.

And you want him to have a competent staff who can do a good job to to do the right thing for the country. And you want people in the administration to tell him no and to tell him that there are moral lines. And you'll never get those people if there's if everyone on our side stands on principle and refuses to compromise. Like if no one is willing to bend, then we've lost, then we'll never get anything.

MerlinThe thing that was running through my mind this whole episode, there were two things really running through my mind. The giant, giant thing was, and this is not going to be a popular thing to say, but this is what was on my mind. Well, let me get the little one. Here's the little one. is I watched this not very long after a surfeit of news that indicates that, according to our intelligence community, I'm not a scholar of this, but it is my understanding that there is a lot of agreement inside the American intelligence community that basically the Russians, some actors acting on behalf of Russia, had an influence, wanted to have an influence on the election.

Further to that point, we learned that there's a pretty good chance that the Russian government or oligarchy was involved. Further to that, at the time I was watching this, it was becoming very clear, at least according to the failing New York Times, that no, there's a very high certainty that probably Putin and his people specifically approved a program to tamper with the election in a way that would help Donald Trump win. Okay, so that's the little thing. And so Barack Obama comes out and says, oh, you know, nothing to me sounds weaker than a president saying, oh, we will react at a time of our choosing.

But whatever. That's fine. But, you know, here's the thing. So we got hacked by the Russians. And so what do you do in retaliation? Do you hack them back? Well, you know what? I'm going to say, I mean, it's probably happening anyway. But my feeling would be no, because that's not who we are. Yeah, that's this is the thing is whatever it is that we do in retaliation. Like, first of all, is that going to is that going to like, you know, unring that bell? No, but it's how you react to things that says how you will be judged in life. It's not what happens to you.

It's how you react to it. And in that case, like, that's not the America that we want. We don't want to say that what they did is OK by doing it back to them. If somebody attacks you with chemical weapons, do you attack them back with chemical weapons because it's wrong to use chemical weapons? That's the little thing I got out of this. And then there's the other one I'm going to shut up in a minute. But the thing is, all of our buddies out there who are very upset about Donald Trump, I'm one of those people. But think about everything that a lot of our buddies are coming up with, with ways to say, well, you want to find the faithless electors. You want to do this. You want to pull this little trick. For every little thing you're doing because Trump, ask yourself how you would feel if people did that way, if Clinton would.

Oh my God, that's so true. So these people say— Every single thing. So we've decided that this is extraordinary enough that now the rules are off. And I'm not saying this is right or wrong. I just want people to really fucking think about it. It's every little rogue maneuver that you want to pull to fuck with Donald Trump, whether or not it's going to work. And it probably won't work because he's got the entire Congress and government behind him. But even if it were effective, do you want that to be a precedent? We set a precedent with Obama about what's okay to do with drones, like what you're allowed to do with the NSA. Knowing those powers are in place with good old grandpa, uncle Barry, like, are you happy to know that Trump will now have access to those same things for every one of these things that you think is going to fix this problem?

Ask yourself if you want that to be the precedent going forward, because that's what Captain Janeway is dealing with. And I found it incredibly affecting.

MaxIt's exactly what was going through my mind when I was watching this. And, you know, people on Twitter, like I've seen so many people say like, you know, in despair as Trump is sort of, you know, the recount didn't happen and the electors didn't abandon Trump and all these sort of plots that never were going to happen don't happen. People keep saying, why isn't Obama do something like he should do something? What is he? What do they imagine him doing?

MerlinLike, have you? What do you what do you want? Every time you have one of these, I'm repeating myself, but every time you've got some kind of big hack for how you're going to fix the Donald Trump problem, ask yourself how much you want that to be the precedent for what an actual grown-up president is allowed to do in the future. Don't let this guy throw you so far off your fucking nut that you start thinking that the ultimate normalization is acting like we should tear down the supporting beams of our entire system of government and our entire ethos as a nation in order to figure out how to fix this one fucktard.

Alexone of the thing is well and this is not a popular thing to say but when i see all my friends and and people who i like agree with who are also like we we try to consider ourselves pacifists and and try to really care and they're just not about this peaceful transition of power i'm like what where else do you want to live he won he won the election guys he won like well to say he won it fairly I I don't even want I do I'm not smart enough to to think about that but like to say

uh not my president no he literally will be your president that is factually wrong and people I I get it I really do and I understand the despair and the fear especially with people who are um like yeah I've talked to a lot of like kids who were who were powerless to vote and I can definitely i don't know oh man people are gonna be so mad i mean uh but i i just can't like what what do you think is going to happen what what are these angry tweets going to accomplish i i just well

Maxwell let me let me flush this out a second because i think like the gay the gay rights issue is is a is a good issue to to talk about because it's a real issue where so much is at stake for real people. So, you know, let's just take for granted that we have a true moral commitment to legal protection for gay people in this country, and that morally we're driven to pursue this issue. Now, if you have a true moral commitment to this issue, I mean, I'm honestly asking you guys,

because this is something like I'm struggling with on so many issues, do you die on the hill of the moral purity of your positions? And do you say, well, I care about this issue so much that I will not move an inch and you will have to,

I mean, I'll lay down on the tracks and you're going to have to drive this train over me to, you know, I'm like, you know what I mean? Like I'm throwing my gears on the body, my body on the gears here. Like you will do nothing. I will not move an inch, right? Because I have moral clarity and I'm clear and I know exactly where I stand on this issue and I won't move at all. Or that's one version. Or do you say, I care so much about the issue of gay rights that I'm actually willing to engage with this guy and compromise and give some things up so that we have, like, rule of law, I live to fight another day, and we get some of what we want?

You know, that's the sort of Obama thing. Like, do you want to say, like, well, 1% is better than 0%, so I'll take 1% today and live to fight again? And I'm honestly asking, because gay rights is such a great issue to think about for this because it's not abstract. Only getting a compromise in gay rights, it sucks for people. It has real legal and actual material ramifications for people's lives. Are they going to be admitted to the hospital room? Are they going to be able to get the tax benefits of marriage?

Are they going to have dignity under the law? Those are real things. So where, and I just, there's not, I'm just curious, like, do you guys have a thought on this?

AlexI mean, we sort of had that already with like, okay, domestic partnerships, we'll take it. And it was still hard. You still couldn't, you know, lots of people wouldn't provide insurance. And it's hard to say. Like, you can't really literally die on the tracks of, like, gay marriage. But you can.

MaxYou can chain yourself to the door of Capitol Hill. I'm serious. I'm serious. You could go to your congressman's office and handcuff yourself to the door and say, the only way I'm moving is if you arrest me and here's my issue, let's do this. Like if all that mattered was the moral clarity of your position on this issue, you would sacrifice yourself symbolically or literally to accomplish your ends.

AlexIf I, okay, so I know we're both fans of rules for radicals. And if I had a concrete, like, like, if there was some sort of concrete effect of that, then yes. um like there's there's been a lot of stuff about like what sort of what protests were work and what don't and why they don't um and I've been in that position before and uh done things that have

concretely uh helped and other times it was you know just being an angry kid and it didn't help um so like yes for that like if if my alderman is like hey you uh like your wife can't see you in the hospital like that this is a very like real thing for me like yeah that is something for sure and and like if there is a registry of any uh uh people in the u.s that are going to be discriminated against like yeah my my name is on that list and I think that I I do have

I don't want to be like on that high horse or anything but like because uh I I'm like sort of you know a recovering bendy catholic so I I do I don't have a strict moral imperative because like that you you have to bend and you can't break um so yeah yeah i'm chaining myself so so so the

Maxsoloninsky book rules for radicals hail satan uh yeah the soloninsky book rule for radicals i mean this is you know coming for me coming out of sort of chicago political organizing like on the streets right like this is my bible of political engagement and um i'll read just a couple paragraphs here because he is, there's no ambiguity in the book here about, and Saul Alinsky, for people who don't know, he's sort of considered like the father of like street organizing and leftist sort of political organizing. He's considered the greatest political organizer and one of the most important

like political thinkers in American politics. And like the left would do well to read him and people who do read him are very successful in democratic politics. And even the right is sort of begrudgingly beginning to accept his way of thinking about politics and his tactics. But this is a little section from his book in Rules for Radicals about the topic of means and ends. And you guys know what I mean by means and ends. The ends is what you're trying to accomplish. The means is like how you do it, right?

MerlinFor most people, as long as they can conceive of the importance of the end, there's almost endless flexibility on what you do for the means. The more you believe in the importance of the end, the more likely you are to think that the means can be very fungible.

MaxRight. And that is sort of the core, I think, of the ethical topic in this episode of Voyager and this whole conversation. So anyway, here's what Solomanski says. He says, this is with regards to this question of like ends and means and like do you compromise or do you like die on the tracks? He says, that perennial question, does the end justify the means, is meaningless as it stands. The real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends is and always has been, does this particular end justify this particular means? Life and how you live it is the story of a means and ends. The end is what you want and the means is how you get it.

Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem. He thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost, of means only whether they will work. To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody.

Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off of his father and the politics of when to go to bed. He who fears corruption fears life. The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe's conscious is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action. In action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of decision that is consistent both with one's individual conscious and the good of mankind. The choice must always be for the latter. Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual's personal salvation.

He who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscious has a peculiar conception of personal salvation. He doesn't care enough for people to be corrupted for them.

Alexthat's the part where i cried on an airplane when i read that i mean it's it's a thing it's a thing

Maxthat happens i but so so my so so to me what's interesting about this is you have you know to go back to voyager for a second you have jane way making all of these compromises on the security of voyager she's giving parts and tools and pieces to the people who she's trying to court to be in the alliance and her crew keeps coming to her and saying what the hell are you doing like you're risking our security you're compromising with these people who are trying to destroy us you're giving away more and more and Janeway keeps saying well here I'll just read this little hang on I pulled it up here she says uh you're seven of nine at one point comes to Janeway and

says so oh no sorry so it's when it's when Tuvok and Chakotay the security officer and the second officer or the first officer are in Janeway's office right and they come to her and they say I can't believe you're giving away things to our enemies, right? And Janeway says, I've become convinced that we've got to stick to our principles, not abandon them. And Chakotay says, should the crew be ready to die for those principles? And Janeway says, if the alternative means becoming thieves and killers ourselves, yes.

But I'm betting that our principles are going to keep us alive. And that just really struck me as like, this is a very clever dramatization of this Saul Alinsky thing of like, Like a good leader and a good strategic leader who will win a battle is willing to think conditionally and to know that there's a difference between bending your principles and breaking them and that it's not binary, that there is no black and white, that you do what you can with what you have as much as you can. and what you you have to sort of contextually be comfortable with that with that ambiguity of

trying to know where that gray area is and walk right up to the line and then when you hit that line to stop and say we're not going to move any further yeah that that's i know you're not a

Merlinwalking dead uh fan but that's one of the themes that's become so interesting in the walking dead um as the story develops especially through the first into the second season is that you know the there is this there's this uh sense of in the face of uh this really disastrous situation how does this group try to hue to the morality of the time before the disaster and you know of course as you can spoiler alert as you can kind of imagine it becomes untenable you you have to do

things in the walking dead you have to do things that you would never even have a nightmare about Like, if your kid gets bitten by a walker, like, you're not just going to, like, pacify them. You have to, like, kill them through the brain. Because after they die, they'll still come back as a walker. That's what makes that show so claustrophobic in some ways is that, you know, you see these little bits of humanity as people, you know, they go through the kind of the Maslow hierarchy until it's just all the way down to, like,

How do I just stop from going all the way into all against all, not stealing from my group? And then that gets played out in different ways. This is not just The Walking Dead, but I think that's one theme that's interesting in apocalyptic things is like, you know, when we've given up all of our moral moorings that's been forced upon us, like, how do we react to that? And at what point do we decide to give up this thing that used to seem precious to us in order to survive? And then what do you gamble or trade in order to keep some other piece alive? And as that gets more desperate and more chairs get removed from that game of musical chairs, it becomes more and more tense.

And I don't know. I think it's always interesting to put yourself, whether that's going to be Rick or that's going to be Captain Janeway, it's interesting to put yourself in. You can't help but think, what would I do in that situation? If her goal is to, above all, make sure that her ship is intact and everybody lives, she might do something differently. So the question becomes, does she think that the alliance is actually the best tactical thing as well as the best moral and ethical thing?

AlexI know this is often talked about in jest, but do you ever talk to your wife? Like what? OK, so if there is a natural disaster and let's say zombies, however it happens, are a thing. Do you have you ever had a conversation like, OK, what do we do? do we stay alive do we do for our kid do we just you know run for the hills do we specifically with zombies no no i'm saying it's a good conversation to have i know john and amy gruber have a plan

Merlinworked out in case they do a face off style style face swap if one of them gets face swapped i think they've worked out like a safe word so they can know which one's the real uh them these are things to work out i think if you're going to be in a relationship you should talk

Alexabout zombies and face swaps i mean i i just think about well it's also sort of the thing of um uh i don't know it's like how long do you wait to see if there's a cure before you uh pull the the if you shoot your uh loved one in the head like uh how long do you wait until you take them off life support i i don't know i i know exactly yeah did you ever see the

Merlina Saturday Night Live sketch the day Beyonce turned black? Yes. It's very, very, very funny. And it's probably my daughter's favorite Saturday Night Live sketch I've ever shown her. And it's basically about like right after the Super Bowl, Beyonce has put out Formation and it's shot as basically the trailer for a horror movie. And it's the day that white people realize that first, that Beyonce is black and that second, maybe this song is not for them. And the entire city is melting down. People are screaming and running in the streets. they don't even recognize their friends anymore because they're realizing they might be black

Alexit's so good also your daughter is probably the coolest person that i i just aspire to be her god she's great

Merlinwe haven't talked much we haven't talked that much about the actual episode and implementation

Maxwell how much can you i mean i mean it's a i mean voyager is is trashy i mean i'll i love it it's one of my favorite shows and I'll be the first to admit it's like well I want to hand it some plaudits I mean I it's pretty like but it's pretty like campy and bad but this is an episode is so

Alexit's such a good standalone episode like I you recommended a uh another episode if we wanted to watch more and I started that and I was just like I don't care you know what that was I was sort of

Maxtrying to improvise on the spot and I was thinking to myself where does this show get good like where

MerlinIf you're watching it, where's the moment where you're like... What's their Greg Pakaitis episode? Thank you.

MaxThank you. And that's the Greg Pakaitis episode if you're watching it for the first two seasons. The season two finale kicks off this great storyline where the show kind of gets good.

MerlinOh, the Master Plan episode?

MaxYes. And you know what? I went back and watched it last night, actually, because I was like...

MerlinMaster Plan is so good. It's such a good episode.

MaxWait, what is Master Plan?

MerlinOh, sorry. I thought you were talking about the season finale of season two of Parks and Rec.

MaxOh, no, no. No, sorry. I'm talking about – so I had recommended if you – so Merlin texted –

MerlinOh, my God. That's a really terrible coincidence. So my daughter and I were basically up to the end. She was loving it, and she said, let's go watch the first episode. Right.

MaxAnd so I texted you and said, we're excited. Should we watch the first episode? And you said – Well, the pilot episode of Voyager is notoriously – it's so boring and bad. It's just awful. and um i was like do not watch the pilot and i sort of hastily improvised this episode to go to which is the season two finale called uh basics part one and that's that's to me that's a moment where voyager kind of like hits a hits a a good note for the first time it's like all right like i see what this show can kind of do but you know i went back and watched it last night to be like

hey i wonder if this sort of like holds up as like a good you know a good episode to to to go to and it does not it you need to have seen so much nonsense before that it's just sort of i don't

Merlinknow well i want to i want to hand out some plaudits um first of all i i have no problem i just sent you the beyonce turn black video alex you should show that to max um i um i'm always i pretty much i'm always grading on a curve at least mentally i'm thinking like taking into account when this was made take into account like where this aired like was this on like what was some like CW or something probably or Fox? What was this on?

AlexCBS and then syndicated on UPN.

MerlinYeah. UPN, okay. Okay, but I have no problem taking all that into account. So I was ready to look past any kind of like, because like I said, I'd seen one episode of this show before that was not very good. It was really cheap and cheesy. But one thing I thought they did very well, and I don't even know when this is from, they did a good job, I thought, of dealing with a large cast for one thing. Like there was something for a lot of people to do in this. And I feel like I learned a little bit about lots of characters that wasn't, you know, a lot of times when you get this this kind of an episode, you'll have like, you know, you have the antagonist, the person who disagrees with them.

And then the protagonist, the person who disagrees with them and the antagonist. And that's the show. I thought it was interesting. I thought it was a team effort. And, you know, I I don't know. I don't expect other episodes of the show to be this good. But I think you've picked a really great one.

AlexI was just thinking about the first scene of this episode, and it's super short.

MaxWhere they're having a fancy dinner.

AlexYeah. It's not nearly as bad as you made it sound terrible.

MaxIt's so cringeworthy.

AlexI loved it. Okay. I thought it was adorable. Exactly. And it made me immediately invested in these characters, because it's goofy, and it's like, what the heck is going on here?

MerlinBut it also sets the tone for, like, I mean, what you don't realize until you're halfway into it is oh i wish we could go back to the days where the guy who looks like a toucan could make anything out of food like it's this moment of plenty right like right before all the privation

Alexthat i think really works i mean that's and that's how my favorite doctor who episodes are set up when uh typically it's it's not necessarily the uh that there's not stakes for the doctor and his companion but you need to establish stakes for the other people in this episode and the ones that do that best usually have like this quirky little scene where you just there's something about it that just hits you and that it I don't know the first scene really did that for me it was dumb

Merlinbut it was still cute I don't know maybe Max Max made it sound like it was going to be like dude

Alexto do baggy pants comedy and I thought yeah maybe I am grading on a curve because I was like oh here

Maxit comes I think you guys generally have I think most people generally have a higher tolerance for campiness than I do. And especially for sort of intentional campiness. So like, I don't mind the campiness of something old, where you can go back and watch it and be like, in its day, this was very earnest, but now we can find a sort of campy humor in it. And the aesthetic of camp as like, we're going to intentionally go in and make something kind of zany and campy. I find it really cringeworthy and awful and trying too hard. And it's like, you can, you know, the thing of

like like don't don't let him see a sweat when something is campy like i can see every bead of sweat on the writer's forehead as they're pounding away on the keys they're just like they're trying so fucking hard to make this like adorably it feels like something you're doing for

Merlinchildren and old people yeah like you're you're trying to do something that a child could laugh at because it's funny and silly or something that somebody can feel warm about because there's some kind of notional old person who's sentimental and i think for somebody who's used to like getting straight to like the in media res plot of something it really feels like unnecessary throat clearing that panders to somebody who's not you maybe that's it and and and it's just it's

Maxjust it's just it's just a try hard thing that like upsets me and it's a reason like i absolutely cannot get into doctor who because doctor who is so campy they're like they're like it's the wobbly time stuff or whatever and he like puts on his hat and they make witticisms and he dances across the screen like get that out of there like i can't stand that these things used to upset me

Merlinmax when you would say these things that weren't accurate um but then i realized that uh despite the things where you have great taste you have terrible taste about something and you're a snob and i think you like being a snob and that makes you even worse as a snob and to be a snob with such unreliable taste might make you a terrible person uh merlin if i if this was on twitter i

Maxwould send you a gif uh to change your mind of the of the what's his name the the captain from Oh, the doctor from Doctor Who. And he'd be like tying his scarf and he'd like wink into the camera and be like, we're all made of stars.

AlexNo. No. Oh.

MerlinHa, ha, ha.

MaxAnd everyone would, a single tear would roll down their face and they'd be like, it's so true.

MerlinOh my God, I love that episode. It's so. It's the stars though.

AlexMax is about five years older than me. And I was at a conference in November and everybody kept saying, Oh man, you remind me so much of Max Temkin. And I was like, what? What? What? Yeah. Yeah.

MaxAlex, it is true that we're like almost the same.

AlexI know.

MaxWe are. We listen to the same music. We listen to the same podcast. We have the same t-shirts. We have the same haircut.

AlexWe like these. I don't have. I go to Supercuts.

MaxI go to the Supercuts that's closer to me. I go to the Floyds that's closer to me. We have, let's see, we have the same laptop, and for a while we had the same stickers on our same Mac products. Like, Alex, it's frightening.

AlexI know.

MaxIt's frightening. We both like women. That's a good point.

AlexMerlin, when I first started working at Cards, I noticed this right away, like, oh, fuck. I dress nearly identically as my boss. And I've slowly started to just kind of basically wear pajamas to work, unless we have an event or something.

MerlinPut on a nice frock for the day.

AlexAnd we both had used this service called Trunk Club. Trunk Club. Yeah. And I was like, fuck.

MaxAlex, you want to tell me about something you like? Oh, God.

AlexWell, I used to like it until we all had the same thing. So now whenever we have to be on film, I bring an extra shirt in case Max is wearing the same one.

MaxSo Alex and I both did Trunk Club for the same reason, which was we both went to an event where we got a gift card for Trunk Club. And then we both canceled Trunk Club for the same reason, which is they refused to send us boring enough clothes. Yeah. It got too fancy.

MerlinI kept asking for like, I was like, is there like some sort of black sweater you could send me? or like i just i want to get something i want to join a club where they send me the same uh unique

Maxlow or black long sleeve uh shirt is that so much to ask and then what happened was the the the my personal stylist at trunk club sent me a box and she was like here's a box of like fun green sweaters and shoes for saint patrick's day the cravat so you could go so when you go out partying on saint patrick's day you'll have like fun green you know button-down shirts to wear and like i was like i must cancel the service sorry to lose you as a sponsor they're they're a very nice company i just well they're just to be clear they're not a sponsor of this episode this episode is however

sponsored by the helix sleep system and me undies okay here's the thing they're sewn with special

Alexsilver thread to me you can get the same black underwear every month it's pretty great there's

MaxSomeone in this office, can I just tell you, there's not a podcast ad that exists where someone doesn't fucking get it in this office. I see all the shit. I see Casper shit coming in. I see people do that. What's the thing where if you're too lazy to buy groceries, they send you like a corn?

AlexOh, a blue apron.

MaxI see people getting blue apron.

MerlinBlue apron is a service that sends you several, basically delivers small plastic bags to your house that probably contain food.

Speaker ATry this Thai chili recipe. Here's a little bit of time.

MaxSomeone posted a picture on Twitter of opening their blue apron, and they opened this precious little cardboard container, and there was a single egg in there. Oh, yeah. It's adorable. It had a label on it, and it said farm egg. And they just said, here is the farm egg.

MerlinI have mixed feelings. They've sponsored shows I've been on, and we have subscribed. My problem is we have a fairly small refrigerator, and one delivery, a delivery from them that creates three meals fills our entire refrigerator with matter and it just it's like i had a funny occasion i think it was about a week ago i was talking about this on on slack where i was wearing four articles of clothing that had been given to me by three different sponsors and i never felt like such a shill in my entire life my socks two of my shirts and my jacket like had come from yeah

Alexwell here's the thing i will say about foot cardigan uh foot cardigan they're like hugs for your feet or whatever i don't know but i of course because i i'm a millennial i went i'm like huh i wonder and and there's all these you know decorative socks and i'm like oh fuck this uh but then they have a collection called borings and they got their no show option yeah and they'll just send you black socks every month and i'm like i don't perfect i wish i wish gold toe socks i

Merlinwish i wish i would get a sponsorship from gold toe socks and i could be like jerry lewis never wear the same pair of socks twice. I would love it if I was just delivered white gold-toe socks

Maxevery month. I could just throw them away. Listen, I know the gold-toe people are listening to this. Listen, here's the deal. Here's what we want. We want 365 pairs of gold-toe socks per year. In exchange, we will read an ad. Now, that's a product I believe in. I'm a gold-toe man. Are

Merlinyou a gold-toe man, Merlin? I am. Gold-toe socks. These are totally socks. I'm a gold-toe man.

MaxThank you for supporting. I go to Target and I buy a potato sack of gold-toed socks. I get them from Amazon in eight packs.

MerlinYeah.

MaxI buy the largest amount I can, and then I'll wear them for two or three years, retire the whole potato sack, buy a new potato sack of gold-toed socks. Boy, I really believe in this product, and if they would sponsor us just by giving us the socks, we will continue to talk about how good gold-toed socks are. If you do not meet our demands in the next 20, we will execute one hostage every hour on the hour until we receive our free socks.

AlexAnd well, but here's the great thing too, about gold toe socks. I used, I used to be, I used to be a Hanes girl, but the problem with that is every year they change like the design of, uh, what their, their branding is called. It's like cool heat or heat off cool. And they, they change the bottom of the sock. So then when you're matching your socks, they don't, you have to like put in, put effort into it. Oh, come on. And I'm like, no,

Merlinthat's the plan, planned obsolescence.

Maxthat's the worst yes it is alex do you find with the hanes so i used to get hanes because i think they're the cheapest sock by volume and so i used to get hanes i like having a lot of socks here's the thing i don't like running out of socks so i have a lot of socks and uh so i'll go but for volume now here's the thing with hanes you wash those things five or six times and they get lumpy it feels like you have marbles in your shoes do you know no that's no good you won't

Merlinyou won't get that with the gold toe family of gold toe men's cotton standard crew athletic socks, white six-pack, sock size 10 to 13. You don't get that with those. Merlin, this is

Maxwow. Troubling. Very troubling. I'm looking at an Amazon search history

Merlinhere and it just scrolls down as far as the eye can see and there's just... November, November. It looks like around autumn. Wow, look at that. Around autumn every year, around my birthday, I just really get excited about socks. You do a white... This is very interesting. You do a white sock. I do a white sock, yeah. These are just the gold toes. These are not all of my socks, but no. I'll just go like, oh, I'm done with these. I want the dirty ones to go away and I want fresh ones. Now, Jerry Lewis, you get you book a gig for Jerry Lewis. He wants a fresh pair of socks in the dressing room. He's never worn the same pair of socks twice.

AlexWhy white socks? Why do you wear white socks?

MerlinBecause I'm a pretty athletic guy. I like to push my extremity to the edge. I'm kind of the Casey Neistat of not doing videos.

The makeup on this show was way better than I expected. It was not Doctor Who level of cheap, that's for sure.

MaxThe makeup on Voyager won many awards, and they invented many makeup technologies that were proprietary to the show that have changed.

MerlinBut the guy that had the mean guy, the Donald Trump guy, who had an axe for a face, that was a nice effect.

MaxThey had very cool. Voyager has probably the best makeup of any sci-fi show. It's notably extremely cool every episode.

AlexI have a quick question. For Max. Yes, you there. Did anybody on Voyager work on Battlestar?

MaxOkay, so there is, so I don't want to get too deep into the whole politics of the Star Trek writers room because I could go, it's a thing I weirdly know way too much about. Yeah, but so Ronald D. Moore is the guy who made Battlestar Galactica, right? And he comes from Next Generation. He got hired on a spec script for Next Generation. And he became the guy, he wrote a spec script and mailed it in and they hired him. And he became the Klingon expert. And he was sort of the go-to guy to write the gritty, realistic, like, Klingon episodes. Ronald D. Moore in season three of Deep Space Nine, Next Generation ends, and the Next Generation writing staff splits up

between the two shows. There's Deep Space Nine, which is three years in, and there's Voyager, which is just starting. It's brand new. It's the golden child network television replacement for Star Trek The Next Generation. All of the, quote-unquote, good writers, the sort of, like, more, I would say, they describe them as the more sentimental Star Trek-y writers go to Voyager, and they continue, you know, they make Voyager into this planet of the week, sort of lightly campy, a rollicking adventure. All of the sort of gritty, weirdo, we want to push the boundaries of television writers

go to Deep Space Nine, and they turn Deep Space Nine into this serialized, like, long arc, like, you can't just watch an episode of Deep Space Nine, you have to watch the whole thing, right? And they really pushed Deep Space Nine in crazy directions, and they became like the bastard stepchild of Star Trek. After Deep Space Nine ends, that group of people, a lot of them left the Star Trek universe. Ronald D. Moore, pretty instrumental guy in Star Trek at that point, he tried to go to Voyager, and he wound up fighting with Michael Piller and the other producers of Voyager so much that they fired him, basically.

Or he quit, I don't know, but he had some sort of awful person. He wrote one episode that was just okay, had a terrible personality conflict, and left. And he reacted so strongly to that and what he felt was broken about Star Trek that he went off and made Battlestar Galactica. And it's sort of interesting because like Ronald D. Moore has said, to him the whole premise of Voyager is this ship is out there in the Delta Quadrant. They're a million miles from home. They have no help anywhere. What he wanted to see was every week them scrabbling and struggling for survival

and selling out their principles piece by piece, and that he wanted it to be a ship of Theseus situation where every week something breaks on the ship and they have to replace it with something worse, and eventually at the end they come limping back home and they're changed. They're not even recognizable. And that's a fact. I mean, I want to see that show. That's an awesome, modern, cool Star Trek show. Voyager is emphatically not that, right? A sort of hilarious trope of Voyager is they're constantly, they have these shuttlecraft. You guys know the shuttlecraft in Star Trek? They're these little mini spaceships they can launch to go on like an away mission.

Voyager just destroys like an average of one shuttlecraft per episode and they never seem to run out of shuttlecraft. And that's like the perfect, you know, it's like the perfect metaphor for like the magic of this show of like nothing ever breaks. They never run out of food or water.

MerlinOh, it kind of kind of resets a little bit each week. Very much so.

MaxAnd even though they're they have nowhere to build a new shuttlecraft or get those materials or whatever. So you just accept that that's part of the magic of Voyager, I guess. but one thing I like about the void is that it is the rare episode of voyager that kind of goes down that like what if path of like oh this is interesting like it's it's like one thing that's kind of cool about the episode is it's like dark for half of the episode because the ship is running on low power and that's just interesting it's just it's like you don't see that in star trek a lot like you know they don't fix everything right away that that's kind of a cool I just kind of

thought that was a cool conceit of this episode so anyway that is that is the crossover with Battlestar Galactica's Battlestar Galactica is very directly a reaction to the some of the Star Trek writers like Ronald D. Moore saying boy Star Trek has lost its way and it doesn't have anything relevant to say and we're going to go make this show that's like dark and gritty and can talk about 9-11 you know and has something to say about human nature and that's a real divergence between in the Star Trek world of like the Voyager people on one hand and the like more Battlestar

Alexgalactica people on the other i can tell that i'm going to go on uh a tangent reading tonight because battle star is probably my my favorite modern sci-fi show alice watch watch i mean watch you don't watch voyager watch deep space that's what i'm thinking is like this sounds fantastic

Maxand yeah it was so weird it no one like no one cared about deep space nine like the network left it alone like no one meddled with it like they always talked about how like they basically felt like the the producers felt like that the inmates were running the asylum and the writers had just like taking this show like off into the wilderness and so they just no one knew what to do so they just ignored it and it got so weird and good it was and it's it's such a it holds up that deep space nine is the only one that holds up today and is not that campy huh anyway um i feel silly

Merlinto even ask this because you've almost certainly seen it have you ever seen the portlandia episode called one more episode oh yeah yes uh do me do do me a favor and watch watch watch watch the watch that episode it's called one more episode it's it's uh you might enjoy it oh that's about

Maxthe battle star galactica where they can't stop yeah yeah i've seen that i've seen it and ronald

Merlind'more is on there but not as himself right that's right yeah and the electric gets shut off because they keep watching we that's we went through that with battle star galactica that was like the wire for us we were like oh we can't watch three in one night can we it's like the Cylons have a plan.

AlexOh my God! I loved it so much. I feel like, you know, those millennials, we really pioneered binge watching because we had Christmas breaks where we had nothing to do, like watching a series.

MerlinThe scene when they're sitting around the black guy's house and he has no idea what they're talking about. That actor, they use him a lot on Portlandia and he's so fucking funny. And they're in the tiny little place, like in the closet typing and the wife throws them.

It's so good. I didn't realize the first time I watched that I didn't realize that that was him that that was Ronald that's his name right Ronald yes I didn't realize that was him and then I watched it again

MaxI was like this is the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life yeah he listening to him like talk about Star Trek and how Star Trek lost its way during this era of like you talked about this in one of your guys this is I think in your uh next generation yeah he's he's very bold he's like he's like Star Trek has become like boring and it's these like serious like goofy like but like weirdly self-serious men and they're all wearing matching pajamas and they're sitting staring at the television and like they're like how do you like tell a story about humanity that way he he really you know he was like the guy to make that criticism and he did it very well

Merlinchallenge it's uh it's my week to pick a challenge and i have a challenge for you to to do over the next week. Are you ready to hear it? Okay. I had an idea for this. I'm going to roll it back and make it easy on it. This week, I would like you to take at least two naps on purpose.

I'm not going to be too demanding about it, but I would like you, and don't get too worked up about it, but on at least two occasions this week, at a time of your choosing, I would like for you to purposely go to a couch or a bed and make the conditions appropriate to take a nap. Whatever you think is appropriate, whatever you call a nap is fine but i would like you to try taking two naps does it count if you're

Alexwith like a racist uncle and you just drink yourself to sleep

8. A Little Something for Daddy 0:00 / 01:31:40